Here are some random facts and historical events about poets or poetry:
1. If you die in Amsterdam without any friends or family left to attend your funeral, a poet will write a poem for you and recite it at your funeral.
2. German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine once wrote in a play from 1821, “Wherever they burn books, in the end, will also burn human beings.” Over a century later, copies of Heine’s books were among the many burned in Berlin’s Opernplatz.
3. An ancient Persian poet recorded the fable of a King who challenged wise men to make him a ring that would make him both happy when he was sad and sad when he was happy. They succeeded by giving him a ring etched with the phrase “This Too Shall Pass.”
4. Before Bob Dylan’s win in 2016, Rabindranath Tagore was the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. He was a wildly talented Indian poet, painter, and musician.
5. French poet Gérard de Nerval took a lobster on walks in the Palais Royal gardens in Paris on the end of a blue silk ribbon, saying “they are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gnaw upon one’s monadic privacy”
6. Poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec survived a German concentration camp by killing his guard with a shovel that was given to him to dig his own grave and then escaping in the guard’s uniform.
7. The words at the base of the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are by Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, from her poem “The New Colossus.” The quote was added to the pedestal 17 years after her death.
8. The concept of the “rap battle” has existed since the 5th century, where poets would engage in “flyting,” a spoken word event where poets would insult one another in verse. The Norse god Loki is noted as having insulted other gods in verse. (i can imagine that smirking face of Loki in MCU ~ )
9. Abram Petrovich Gannibal was an African child kidnapped to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great. The tsar freed him and raised him as his godson. Gannibal became a Major-General and the Governor of Reval. He is the great-grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, considered the greatest Russian poet.
10. Poet Carl Sandburg, when attempting to visit a high school in Illinois that was named after him, was mistaken for a hobo and ordered to leave the premises.
11. Su Hui, a fourth-century Chinese poet, wrote a poem in the form of a twenty-nine by twenty-nine character grid. Each line can be read forward or backward, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. This arrangement allows for 2,848 different readings.
12. The Romantic Era, English poet Lord Byron had a pet bear while he attended Cambridge, in protest of the school’s rule on no dogs. There was no rule forbidding bears.
13. American poet and activist Alice Dunbar Nelson was rejected by both the white and the black society because white people found she was “too black” and black people found she was “too white”.
14. Poet Conrad Aiken had his tombstone be in the shape of a park bench so that poetry lovers could sit there and enjoy a drink or two.
15. The hugely influential french poet Arthur Rimbaud stopped writing altogether at the age of 21 and spent the last ten years of his life dealing firearms in Africa.
16. The Roman poet Virgil kept a pet housefly, and upon its death, he held an extremely extravagant funeral for it. He even built it a mausoleum. (wait this reminded me- in DMC saga, Virgil is a demi-human- )
17. After poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife died, he buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her in a fit of grief. However, he later changed his mind, had her dug up, and published the poems. (WAIT- big brain time- Dante is sibling of Virgil in DMC saga, this explains why they both are so- jk XD )
18. The poet who coined the phrases, “Variety’s the very spice of life” and “God moves in a mysterious way” was institutionalized for insanity, depression, and suicide attempts, but was also a forerunner of the Abolitionist movement.
19. The earliest known poet and author in history was Enheduanna an Akkadian princess and high priestess who lived in 22nd c. B.C. She is one of the first women whose name is known to history.
20. A Russian poet named Sergei Yesenin wrote his final poem “Goodbye, My Friend, Goodbye” with his own blood and subsequently committed suicide by hanging.
21. Robert Frost was the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration when JFK asked him to recite a poem at his inauguration in 1961. Frost wrote a new poem for the occasion but was incapable of reading it because of how bright it was outside. So, he recited “The Gift Outright” from memory instead.
22. The term “Lesbian” stems from the Ancient Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos who lived from 620-570 BCE. Her poetry portrays homoerotic feelings and she wrote over 10,000 lines of poetry. However, even though her works were widely known only 650 lines survive today.
23. One of the greatest poets of the Middle Ages is known as the Archpoet. Despite his fame, his name is unknown, and the only things known about him are what he mentioned in his poems. It’s not even certain where his nickname Archpoet comes from.
24. One-legged English poet W.E Henley was the inspiration for Long John Silver in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and his daughter was the inspiration for Wendy in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan.
25. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa wrote under at least seventy-two heteronyms, most of them with different personalities and writing styles.
26. E. E. Cummings dedicated his self-published volume of poetry, No Thanks, to the fourteen publishers who had turned it down.
27. Seventeenth-century poet Sir John Suckling invented the card game cribbage.
28. Lizzie Doten’s 1863 book, Poems from the Inner Life, included poems which Doten claimed to have received from the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe.
29. ‘Metrophobia’ is the name for a fear of poetry.
30. Sir Walter Scott composed much of his bestselling epic poem ‘Marmion’ while on horseback.
31. The ancient epic Indian poem, the Mahabharata runs to over 100,000 lines.
32. George MacDonald (1824-1905) wrote a two-word poem called ‘The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs’. It simply reads: ‘Come Home.’
(When the name of books is bigger than the content- )
33. ‘Rhapsodomancy’ is divining the future by picking a passage of poetry at random.
34. The three biggest-selling poets in the world are Shakespeare, Lao-Tzu, and Khalil Gibran.
35. G. K. Chesterton wrote a poem called
‘Plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobatrix’
(Wh- how does it pronounce - wait- )
Information/Facts courtesy:
https://interestingliterature.com/2015/07/31-interesting-facts-about-poetry-and-poets/
https://www.kickassfacts.com/poet-facts/
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